Fundevogel 2015: Drastic Tomes Call for Drastic Measures

At the start of this year my TBR numbers are about the same as they were a year ago. That's ok, we all know how hard it can be to keep up with our book acquisition habits. However I continue to think my TBR queue is to big for comfort, especially with how much I use the library. So this year I'm going to sharply limit the books I collect. I won't participate in this years ER program and I'm capping the number of new additions this year to 12. And that includes any gifted books and the two crowd-sourced books I funded last year.

This will certainly require me to find great strength within myself, the likes of which Ian McKellen speaks of.

Pre-2015 Inventory:

listing as of 12/31/14

Sorta arranged by category. Dates are included when its acquisition date is known. I think this is complete, I'll update it if I find something I've missed.

Various Works of Fiction & Literature

Devil on the Cross - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Annotated Huck Finn - Mark Twain (gift)
Losing Battles - Eudora Welty
Water Music - T. C. Boyle

Various Works of Non Fiction

The Italian Boy - Sarah Wise
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond (gift)
Laxdaela Saga - unknown
A Bright and Guilty Place - Richard Rayner 2/1/12
Bloody Foreigners - Robert Winder 2/6/13 (gift)
The Sun and the Moon - Matthew Goodman 3/2/13
Just the Facts: How "Objectivity" Came to Define American Journalism - David Mindich 7/1/13
From Barnum & Bailey to Feld - Ernest Albrecht 11/10/14 (ER)
The Reporter's Handbook - John Ullmann 11/17/14
Righting the Mother Tongue - David Wolman 12/25/14 (gift)

Medicine
The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker
Charlatan - Pope Brock

Religion, Myth & Folklore

The Golden Bough - James George Frazer
The New Annotated Oxford Bible - various
Forests of the Vampire - Charles Phillips

Boxall's Batch

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Monk - Matthew G. Lewis
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez
Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs 3/21/13

Biography & Memoir

This Boy's Life - Tobias Wolff
The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare - Doug Stewart
All Over but the Shoutin' - Rick Bragg
Dead Men Do Tell Tales - Byron De Prorok
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain
Burton on Burton - Mark Salisbury (gift)
Kingdom Under Glass - Jay Kirk 1/31/12 (gift)
The Autobiography Of Bertrand Russell: The Early Years - Bertrand Russell 11/4/13
The Mystery of Lewis Carroll - Jenny Woolf 2/24/14

Computer Reference

CSS in Easy Steps
Web Publishing with HTML and XHTML
DVD Authoring with Adobe Encore
Essential ZBrush
The Art of Rigging
Complete Maya Programming: An Extensive Guide to MEL and C API - David Gould 5/14/13

DIY Ref

The Animation Book
Apocalypse Cakes: Recipes for the End - Shannon O'Malley 12/25/12 (gift)
Applique - Pauline Brown 6/30/14
Crewel Embroidery - Erica Wilson 6/30/14
Working With Plastics - Time-Life Books 7/2/14
Stage Costume Techniques - Joy Spanabel Emery 10/21/14

Language Rediculousness

Аня в странѣ чудесъ - Lewis Carroll (translated by Vladimir Nabokov) 7/12/12
501 Russian Verbs - Thomas Beyer Jr. Ph.D. 1/28/13
Master the Basics Russian - Natalia Lusin, Ph.D. 5/29/13
Весёлые зверята - Художник В. Бастрыкин 10/21/14
The Russian's World: Life and Language - Generva Gerhart 10/21/14
English Grammar for Students of Russian - Edwina J. Cruise 10/21/14
Mastering German - A.J. Peck 6/21/14
German Grammar - Erik V. Greenfield 7/14/14
Essentials of German Grammar - 7/14/14
German in a Nutshell - Henry Regensteiner, Ph.D. 12/3/14
Norsk Folkemuseum - 1/13/14
Señor Peregrino - Cecilia Samartin 5/1/14
Kakerlakkene - Jo Nesbø 6/30/14
Beginning Norwegian - Einar Haugen 8/26/14
Complete Norwegian - Margaretha Danbolt Simons 12/25/14 (gift)
El Túnel - Ernesto Sábato 8/4/14

Books acquired in 2015:
Books purchased, won, swapped for or gifted to me.

1. Nybörjarsvenska - Ulla Göransson & Hans Lindholm 2/5/15
2. Nybörjarsvenska Övningsbok - Ulla Göransson & Hans Lindholm 2/5/15
3. Teach Yourself Beginner's German - Rosi McNab 2/9/15
4. A Handbook of Russian Verbs - Frank J. Miller 2/9/15
5. Svensk-Engelsk Ordbok - Various 2/10/15
6. Mastering Spanish - Laurel Herbert Turk & Aurelio M. Espinosa 2/10/15
7. Spanish the Easy Way - Ruth J. Silverstein 2/11/15
8. Through the Woods - Emily Carroll 2/18/15 (gift)
9. Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer 2/18/15 (gift)
10. A Grammar of Contemporary German - Max Hueber 2/23/15
11. The Sober Truth - Lance Dodes 3/11/15 (ER)
12. Webster's Desk Spanish-English English-Spanish Dictionary 4/12/15
13. Alabama Studio Sewing Patterns - Natalie Chanin 9/7/15
14. Stand Still Stay Silent - Minna Sundberg 9/29/15
15. Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen - Matthew P. Mayo 10/13/15 (ER)
16. The Myths That Stole Christmas - David Kyle Johnson 11/?/15
17. Nimona - Noelle Stevenson 12/1/15

Well that went downhill fast. I blame Paperbackswap's eminent restructuring and all those book credits I didn't want to lose.

Books read in 2015:
This includes all books read, not just the ones from my shelves. Books that don't come from my TBR shelf will be italicized.
I'm counting books acquired and read during the year as off the shelf. They're still off my shelf, even if they haven't been there long.

1. Righting the Mother Tongue - David Wolman 1/3/15 (gift)
2. Laxdæla Saga - unknown 1/13/15
3. Amphigorey - Edward Gorey 1/14/15
4. From Barnum & Bailey to Feld - Ernest Albrecht 1/26/15 (ER)
5. Hellboy: Darkness Calls - Mike Mignola 2/6/15
6. Underwater Welder - Jeff Lemire 2/13/15
7. Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 1 - Ben Templesmith 2/15/15
8. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco 2/16/15
9. The Stranger - Albert Camus 2/18/15
10. Through the Woods - Emily Carroll 2/19/15 (gift)
11. Donald Has A Difficulty - Peter Neumeyer & Edward Gorey 2/20/15
12. Werewolves of Montpellier - Jason 3/6/15
13. The Sober Truth - Lance Dodes 3/18/15 (ER)
14. Amphigorey Again - Edward Gorey 3/20/15
15. The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker 3/22/15
16. Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer 3/22/15 (gift)
17. Burton on Burton - Mark Salisbury 3/26/15 (gift)
18. Batman: The Killing Joke - Alan Moore 3/28/15
19. Forests of the Vampire - Charles Phillips 4/12/15
20. Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs 4/13/15
21. Authority - Jeff VanderMeer 4/14/15
22. Dead Men Do Tell Tales - Byron De Prorok 4/30/15
23. Acceptance - Jeff VanderMeer 5/10/15
24. Devil on the Cross - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o 6/2/15
25. The Mystery of Lewis Carroll - Jenny Woolf 6/16/15
26. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown 7/27/15
27. The Princess and the Pony - Kate Beaton 7/28/15
28. Hellboy: Conqueror Worm - Mike Mignola 7/28/15
29. The Monk - Matthew G. Lewis 8/24/15
30. Lumberjanes, Vol. 1 - Noelle Stevenson 8/26/15
31. The Democracy Project - David Graeber 9/11/15
32. The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare - Doug Stewart 9/30/15
33. Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia - Richard Hertz 10/5/15
34. Light - M. John Harrison 11/12/15
35. Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen - Matthew P. Mayo 12/5/15 (ER)
36. The Myths That Stole Christmas - David Kyle Johnson 12/14/15 (ER)
37. Stand Still Stay Silent - Minna Sundberg 12/21/15
38. This Boy's Life - Tobias Wolff 12/28/15
39. Nimona - Noelle Stevenson 12/30/15

Happy new year - and good luck with your 'limited acquisition' resolution.

1. Righting the Mother Tongue - David Wolman 1/3/15
off my shelf

This is a great little book about English spelling, how it got so weird and what people think of it. Wolman presents an easily digestible look at the path written English has taken to arrive at its current state. It's certainly not comprehensive and the linguistics stay pretty light, but I think it's just right for the layperson. Even more praise worthy is his handling of the subject of spelling reform. Both historical and contemporary movements are discussed and Wolman covers all sorts of angles. Good cases are made on both sides and I am pleased to report that the book gives a nuanced and fair look at a complicated and often controversial subject. Wolman's apparent stance at the end gives an optimistic nod to future linguistic developments in a manner I hadn't considered before but find fascinating.

For what it's worth, Wolman didn't seem to know about the impact of Norse on English, but some of his examples of shifts in English spelling shows shifts away from forms similar or identical to the Norwegian word.

>5 imyril: Thanks! I'm going to try to keep an eye on your other thread.

2. Laxdæla Saga - Anonymous 1/13/15
off my shelf

This was the first saga I've read and it wasn't what I expected. It isn't the fantastical mess that I got with Beowulf (sorry Beowulf, I didn't hate you, but you were pretty rediculous), nor was is the ripping myth you get in the Prose Edda. Instead the saga is a sort of family history. It begins with the decision being made to leave Norway and settle Iceland and follows the doings of the descendants of these settlers for many generations. It all has the feel of a very personal history, the sort very much serves to tell it's audience who they are as much as what came before. As such it isn't exactly a pageturner, but there is a compelling directness, intimacy and humor that makes it hard not to connect with the characters even though their stories come and go quickly with the generations. And yet, in between weddings, births and so on there'll be some bloodbath complete with some dude holding his guts into his belly or some dude will decide to visit Ireland because he really came to appreciate the country in the days he spent pillaging it. It's like hearing about the seriously messed up shit your grandparents got into as a tangent of an otherwise forgettable story.

3. Amphigorey - Edward Gorey 1/14/15
from the library

I think the strength of the illustration often carries the writing here, though there is some very clever writing as well. This collection includes some very early works where he hadn't completely settled into his style yet. I was particularly impressed (yet again) by his use of absence to create meaning and mood. This is most strongly noticed where strangely bare environments evoke moving and enimatic humanity in their curious and limited traces of occupation.

4. From Barnum & Bailey to Feld - Ernest Albrecht 1/26/15
off my shelf

This reads as if it was assembled from a score of spreadsheets. I suppose such a book could be useful to someone writing or producing a slavishly accurate serial drama about the circus. Barring that it's hard to imagine a scenario wherein reporting the numbers of horses and chorus girls for every era of show is a good use of ink. You see this isn't so much a history of Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey's circus as it is an audit. It's astounding that with such a subject Albrecht can breeze past the use of dyed pigeons or the logistics of an elephant ballet, his focus never deviating from the ledger books, scheduling, acquisitions and management changes.

>7 fundevogel: I have a doorstep of Icelandic myth to read at some point, which includes the Laxdaela Saga I think. I've been struggling to find the motivation - I'm intellectually intrigued, but always seem to be after something slightly easier to digest ;)

5. Hellboy: Darkness Calls - Mike Mignola 2/6/15
from the library

I wasn't near so impressed with this one as the other Hellboy books I've read. But for reasons other than I might have expected. Mignola turns the artistic duties over to another here, but that worked out fine. The artist at work does an admirable job emulating Mignola's style, enough that if I didn't know it wasn't Mignola I probably wouldn't have noticed the difference. What I didn't care for was the aimlessness of the story. In the past Hellboy stories have been well contained and distilled. They weren't super complicated, but they were well crafted and efficient. But here it starts to just feel like a parade of adversaries for Hellboy to rumble with. The voice of the writing is true to form, but Mignola seems to be fumbling with the task of developing a longer story.

6. Underwater Welder - Jeff Lemire 2/13/15
from the library

The introduction to this graphic novel likens it to a lost episode of the Twilight Zone. I could not have come up with a more apt description. Lemire perfectly captures a very human tragedy within a surreal event of ambiguous actuality. The art is beautiful, with cinematic framing and admirable pacing. The writing always feels genuine with a voice as natural as I have ever encountered in any written media. Well done.

7. Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 1 - Ben Templesmith 2/15/15
repeat read

Reread this one just for funsies.

8. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco 2/16/15
off my shelf

The Name of the Rose is a far cry from what I hoped it would be. I blame the deliciously meta prologue and the obvious Borges influence. But Umberto Eco's novel is a far cry from the Library of Babel. While the novel isn't bad per se it is undeniably wanky, and not in a fun way. The book takes place over the course of seven days, but it took me four weeks of dogged reading to get through it. Do you have any idea how thoroughly a day must be documented for it to take four days to read at that sort of pace? It's absurd. It might as well be 24 with scribes.

So there's the first problem, it's conspicuously and pointlessly drawn out.

I'm more ambivalent about the content. There is much here on heresy, political power plays, religious minutiae, logic and that manner of intellectual fappery. None of that bothers me and on many occasions Eco (or his mouthpieces Adso and William) had rather erudite and poetic observations on various matters. But while I appreciated this, nothing Eco came up with was anything I hadn't come across before or figured out myself years ago. Additionally as an atheist, indifferent to the minute sectartian differences that get people burned in this book, I simply couldn't relate to the passions that drove the violence and machinations. They were pretty much all just stirring up a shitstorm for nothing in my opinion.

Argueably the best part of the book is the story that isn't on the page. This is set up in the prolog, but is untouched for the rest of the book. Or at least it is never explicitly returned to. You see, the prolog establishes a framework for the following novel. Ostensibly the author, Eco I suppose, came into possession of a French translation of a Latin manuscript while travelling. He takes upon himself to translate the manuscript into Italian. However, before long he loses the original manuscript (mistakenly taken by a travelling companion he seems to have had a falling out with). And so he is now left with just his Italian translation and whatever notes he made.

After his journey he attempts to track down another copy or at least learn more about the manuscript. He tracks down the materials that he had noted as being sourced in the French translation, but the references to the manuscript they are supposed to contain simply do not exist. Tlön, Ukbar and Tertius Minor anyone? At this point Eco leaves us to speculate if the manuscript was a fraud, a forbidden text expunged from history in some diabolical and sweeping conspiracy, or simply a figment of his imagination. Though a more difficult question might be how we can be expected to believe that the following complete, 611 page novel could possibly be the incomplete Italian translation he supposedly tootled out in his down time while on holiday.

At the very least this translation of a translation of a ostensible translation of a lost text excuses the fact that Eco's prose (or to be fair, the English translation of Eco's prose) in no way resembles 13th century writing. I'm no expert on the subject, but I've read enough 12th and 13th century texts to know this text doesn't even try to emulate them. And that's fair, we all know what a transformative effect a few turns in google translate can produce. But the real potential lies in the conclusion the reader draws about the nature of the book itself.

Do you accept that the manuscript was originally written by Adso documenting the events he describes? If so, is he reliable? How could he possibly deliver such an agonizingly detailed account so many years after the fact? Or was Adso a pseudoepigraphical invention? To what end? Typically pseudoepigraphical religious texts have very specific political and religious goals. What ends might this text been written to serve? And if either of these are the case what does it mean that any other trace of the book has been purged from history? While there is something oroborusesque about the suppression of a text obsessed with the supression of another lost text, what are we to think about the possible suppression of this book? What of it's content would be considered so offensive or threatening to inspire such action? Perhap the sex scene where a woman's breasts are compared to a clump of grapes?* Or was it simply a hoax or a fit of meta delirium? This is the story I hope to continue chewing over now that the dreary task of actually reading The Name of the Rose is behind me. In between rolling my eyes at the idea that a book about a labyrinthine library featuring a blind monk named Jorge merits having other books published to explain it. Of course.

Seriously. Just read Ficciones.

*Actually, in my head canon the breasts like clumps of grapes would indicate that the text was not written by Adso as no man that has ever seen a breast could ever make such a description. However it would imply a certain sexual naivete or simulated sexual naivete on the part of the actual author. I favor the second possibility as it takes a staggering amount of credulity to conceive of a person that, even never having seen a naked breast, could think they probably resemble a clump of grapes.

9. The Stranger - Albert Camus 2/18/15
off my shelf

Reading this made me dislike The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time even more. Both stories center on characters with significant social handicaps, but only Camus dealt with the matter with the craft, intent and even-handedness to make it work. With Camus we are given a means of understanding and empathizing, without infantilizing. His narrator is socially handicapped in that he understands and intereacts with the world in a manner that conflicts with the expectations society has of him. He gets on in his own way as best he can with a certain amount of ignorance of how the rest of the world works. Ultimately it is this ignorance that dooms him as he fails to avoid dubious situations and is ultimately judged not for his actions, but for his irregularity.

>14 fundevogel: *laughter* I actually recall quite enjoying The Name of the Rose, but I read it in my teens when my threshold for insanely-drawn out plot-shenanigans was remarkably high (I had relatively limited access to new books, so I did a lot of rereading and devoured a bunch of things on my mother's shelves that I can't imagine picking up these days - this being one of them - with an attitude of 'the longer the better', because it would increase the time until I was next at a loss for what to read). However, I can't look back and figure out why, especially as I think I'd already seen the film. I have to admit I've never been able to get through any Umberto Eco since - I fall asleep within a couple of chapters of slogging and lose the will to breathe, let alone read.

>15 fundevogel: I thought The Stranger was one of the most interesting books I read a few years back for exactly these reasons. You can't sympathise, exactly, nor empathise (not least because both would be unwelcome and never understood), but you can understand after a fashion - at least up to the scene on the beach. After that I could watch respectfully, in terms of the choices made and the writing itself. I found it challenging and fascinating, but then I didn't really enjoy Curious Incident either.

>16 imyril: It's funny how much your reading taste change isn't it? I used to be far more accepting of what I read as well. I think my soft little brain thought a book must be worth reading if someone went to the trouble of binding it. It took me a little while to be confident enough in my critical skills to start letting people know what was wrong with this book or that. Of course now that's the best part of reading some books.

I'm glad I'm not alone in my dislike of the Curious Incident. It's probably been too long since you read The Stranger to remember, but I've been kinda frustrated reading the chatter about it on Library Thing. There's a lot of talk about whether of not Mersault is a sympathetic character, but it seems pretty obvious to me that Camus meant Mersault's moral weaknesses to stand in contrast to the moral weakness of the so called normal people that execute him, not for his crimes, but for habits and characteristics they found alien and repulsive. Mersault, the ostensibly bent one, stumbles into killing a man when he falls into a dangerous situation his is ill-prepared to navigate. The so-called moral majority decide to kill him after deliberating over his relationship with his mother and girlfriend and general demeanor. It's a pretty scathing commentary on the weakness of intuitive justice and morality. And yet most people seem to miss it completely.

10. Through the Woods - Emily Carroll 2/19/15
off my shelf

Not long ago I read an interesting article about what complementary bedfellows horror and beauty make. Of course I'm not sure where I read it, but the gist of it was that each makes the other more palatable, as both may be hard to digest on their own. Horror for its obvious distasteful elements and beautiful for its own tendency to go too far and choke on its own saccharine extravagance. But paired they can acheive a beautiful balance. The surreal and extreme nature of horror can create a landscape that not only accomodates the liberties of artistic beauty, but justifies and embraces them. Emily Carroll's work exemplifies such a union.

You are not likely to find a collection of ghost stories as beautifully crafted both in word and image as Through the Woods. Carroll's reticent prose and chillingly beautiful images capture the pacing and tone of told ghost stories. It almost isn't fair to call the images illustrations as their partnership with the text is so complete that they add as much to the story as the words, a virtue rarely so fully realized in graphic storytelling. And true to form the stories themselves have the certain familiarity while remaining innovative and mysterious.

Highly recommended.

11. Donald Has A Difficulty - Peter Neumeyer & Edward Gorey 2/20/15
from the library

Neumeyer and Gorey regall us with the ordeal Donald suffers when he gets a splinter. It's what you would hope for in such a story.

12. Werewolves of Montpellier - Jason 2/6/15
from the library

I wish it was practical for me to get a hold of Jason's comics in the original Norwegian. It's frustrating knowing I could manage the original text and still be stuck with the English translation. Shakes fist at the world.

Like the other comics I've read by Jason, Werewolves of Montpellier revolves around the sort of simple human conflict anyone could relate to and then then carries it gently and somewhat unpredictably to it's bittersweet conclusion. The humor is absurd, but deadpan. I know I'm meant to care most about the lead character's secret love for his lesbian roommate, but I can't get over the genius of the transformation of an anthropomorphic character into a werewolf that looks like the same anthropomorphic character, but with sharper teeth and torn pants.

>17 fundevogel: that's a really good point on The Stranger - I've never gone and looked at the LT chatter on it, but I absolutely took the book to be looking just as pointedly at the habits and mindset of society as much as those of Mersault. The thing that sharpened that point is the way in which it reflected what we see in every tabloid and most tv news coverage of crimes (heh, and politicians - "While we have no evidence of X, he has cheated on his wife and he once stole a lollipop from a baby. Make him resign!")

13. The Sober Truth - Lance Dodes 3/18/15 (ER)
off my shelf

The Sober Truth is a clear and concise look at alcohol addiction and it's treatment. Both are greatly misunderstood thanks to false wisdom purpetuated by the largely unchallenged 12-Step orthodoxy. Dodes looks into how a religious program that has consistently misrepresently it's efficacy through dubious reporting became sacrosanct in the field of addiction treatment. And in doing so he overturns some misconceptions that ought to be obvious if they hadn't become gospel. Here are a few.

1. 12 step programs are neither scientific nor medically sound. There success rate falls somewhere between 5-8% successful, a number comparable to the success rate of people who get sober without any treatment. The big red flag is that a legitimate medical treatment would never be excused from it's failure to act as designed by blaming the patient. In this way 12 step programs take credit for successsful treatment while blaming the vast number of addicts the program does not help.

2. Addiction is not a disease and addicts are not broken or fundamentally different than other people. It seams obvious when you think about it, but this oft cited truism is completely absurd. Alcoholism can't be traced to any particular biological cause, despite endless hunts for an "addiction" gene. More telling is the fact that normal diseases don't reappar experessed in completely different ways as recovered addicts often develop new addictions to replace old ones.

3. Alcoholics Anonymous is a religious program. Despite their ceaseless claims to the contrary their 12 steps, on multiple occasions, require the participant to believe in and depend on a "higher power". The frequent defence that it could be anything, even a "doorknob" ought to be met with the credulous disdain it deserves if they want us to believe that having faith in a doorknob could facilitate recovery. Thankfully some states have recognized the religious character of the program and have made it illegal for courts to mandate attendance as to do so violates the separation of church and state.

There are more but I'll leave that to the book. But Dodes isn't hear to drag AA and it's emulators through the mud (that's what the Orange Papers are for). At it's core The Sober Truth is designed to despell the widespread misinformation and provide better information and treatment alternatives. This book couldn't be more right for people facing addiction either in themselves or loved ones. And I hope that the information here gets to more would be ex-addicts before they are herded into the dubious and often detrimental programs based on AA's 12 steps.

>22 fundevogel: I didn't realise the religious underpinnings of AA until I read (most of) A Million Little Pieces (which I hated, and didn't finish, although a friend who has a number of addicts in her family tells me it's painfully accurate). It put a whole new complexion on AA, which seems to be a practically Victorian approach to tackling addiction.

>23 imyril: I'm not exactly sure how I heard about it originally, though I'm certain it was some sort of text pointing out how courts shouldn't be requiring anyone to attend as doing so violated separation of church and state. The Orange Papers go much farther in their criticism of AA and make a pretty good case for it meeting the usual description of a cult. Regardless of if you'd go that far it is pretty amazing it's passed itself off as credible treatment for so long.

14. Amphigorey Again - Edward Gorey 3/20/15
from the library

No review because there are only so many way I can say that I love Edward Gorey's books.

15. The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker 3/22/15
off my shelf

So it turns out this book looks more credible than it actually is. Pinker does a poor job of actually defining what he means by "human nature" and capitalizes on the ambiguity by never planting a flag on the sort and extent of influence heredity and environment play on said human nature. His opponents on the other hand are inevitably presented as holding the most implausible and rigid stance in the nurture camp. It's not immediately suspicious when looking at the historical debate, but is very much so if one plans to refute 'the modern denial of human nature'.

Ultimately Pinker fails to properly address the modern voices of science and psychology. He practically admits this when he mentions that when explaining his book to colleagues the usual reaction is skepticism of the relevancy of a book refuting a belief no one holds. But he dismisses that. Instead of venturing into the disputed territory of the how both hereditary and environmental factors come together Pinker intentionally takes an unspecified position somewhere on the side of nature and nurture so he may benefit from portraying his opponents' cartoonishly defined positions as two-dimensionally as possible. Here there be straw men.

It simply isn't very scientific. When studies are mentioned they are often poorly explained if at all which does fuck all to support his argument beyond some childish appeal to the authority. Data is only as good as its source and rigor and the nearest Pinker comes to defining studies is to occassionally tell us if there were twins involved. Yes, I understand twins are great to have in genetic studies, but I'd also like to know what was being tested and how it was evaluated and if that thing the study puts a number is actually the sort of data that can quantified. But no.

Ultimately Pinker isn't debating a scientific point, but a political one. A dumb political one. And while it's certainly no surprise that fake science and poor philosophy are often shitty bedfellows when it comes to politics the arguments against them ought to stand on the rigors of science and logic, not petulent rhetoric. I probably agree with at least 80% of Pinker's actual postion on the matter, but none of that came of any argument Pinker brought to the table. No, the only reasonable arguments Pinker trots out were some elementary ethics and common sense. And frankly, I don't need anyone to explain that just because something may be true doesn't make it right any more than I need Pinker to explain that, actually, rape is sexual. No shit Sherlock.

16. Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer 3/22/15 (gift)
off my shelf

At some point I became highly skeptical of first person fiction. I am fairly picky about writers' voices, more so in fiction than non-fiction, and at some point it became clear that usual sins of writing are harshly magnified in the first person. So I salute Jeff VanderMeer for his deft handling in this first novel of his Southern Reach Trilogy.

The slim novel follows the events of just a few days as an expedition collapses. It is the latest of a series of ill-fated expeditions into the mysterious and dangerous Area X. The novel is written as the journal of the unamed biologist on the expedition, a framework that grounds the voice and justifies the detailed narration of events as well as the more personal reflection. But more telling is VanderMeer's judgement in withholding information. As detailed and poetic as the journal can be, it also has a certain reservation. You can see the writer skirting intimate information, information that she clearly knows could compromise her reader's view of her. In short, she knows she's unreliable narrator, but despite all the things that ought to have kept her from joining the expedition she's there and she's not eager to expose herself in what amounts to a log book.

It is the reservation and eventual surrendering of reservation that I find so satisfying. The biologist doesn't know who will read her journal so there are beautiful shifts in how she tells her story as her expectations of her reader, the expedition and her life change. Paradoxically in surrendering herself to Area X she embraces her most secret self. It's quite lovely if you turn your head, just enough so that the carnage is out of frame. Of course I always prefer the loveliness with at least a spoonful of carnage so I couldn't be happier.

>27 fundevogel: I enjoyed Annihilation - I didn't necessarily find it an easy read, but it was quite satisfying, and I've liked it more the more time I've had to think about it. It settles well. I liked the rest of the trilogy less, although it was still intriguing - but I am less certain I'll revisit the second and third instalments. I'm absolutely sure I'll reread Annihilation.

>28 imyril: I've requested the second book from my library, though I'm trying to think of it as a separate entity to limit my preconceptions. I peeked enough online to know it follows a different character and since The Biologist so defined the first book I'm not really sure what to expect.

17. Burton on Burton - Mark Salisbury 3/26/15
off my shelf

This was assembled from interviews Burton gave up to when he was making Ed Wood. It's an easy light read, but Burtons reflections feel very honest. It is focused on his projects so it functions more as an overview of his creative development and projects up to Ed Wood rather his biography. All in all I found it an easy and enjoyable look one man's creative history.

18. Batman: The Killing Joke - Alan Moore 3/28/15
from the library

I checked this out based on the high praise Burton had for it in the previous book. It's not rather my kind of comic, but it is well executed both in writing and art. Neither really doesn't anything that really grabs me, the story isn't exactly surprizing and the style is fairly conventional. However, the handling of each show a high degree of craft and love of the art. So, while it isn't really my thing, I can respect that it is of a high caliber.

19. Forests of the Vampire - Charles Phillips 4/12/15
off my shelf

There are few vampires in attendence here, but I'd heard that before. Unfortunately the folklore seems pretty scant too. Maybe I'm just not fond of the expository delivery. Part of me is starting to the suspect the whole Myths and Mankind series is secretly just a vehicle for whoever makes all of the goofy fabric painting illustrations the things are always filthy with. It makes me miss the Eyewitness books where the photographs and illustrations were always more varible and illuminating.

20. Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs 4/13/15
off my shelf

Reads like poetry, but I got the feeling it was going a bit long when it starting feeling less like Henry Miller and more like Bertold Brecht. I'm not sure if that was a shift that happened in the text or in how I read it. In general I'd say it was a good ride, though I wasn't particularly concerned with trying to find sense in it. Mostly I just enjoyed the extravagent language, surreal imagery and debased characters. Burroughs really did have a way with words. And while it's easy to write the whole thing off as gibberish he has a way of dropping sharp, stinging insights when you aren't expecting.

Well, as one judge said to the other, "Be just, and if you can't be just be arbitrary."

I've got the fear.

21. Authority - Jeff VanderMeer 4/14/15
from the library

I quite enjoyed this second book of the Southern Reach Trilogy as well, though it is a slower boil than the first. Being set outside Area X means we get less exposure to the uncanny for most of the book, though shit does eventually get real. I noticed at somepoint that VanderMeer often dropped the subject of his sentences. He'd lead with the verb and I often had to reread before I realized that the sentence just didn't have a subject. I can't remember if he did this in the first book and I am curious if this a VanderMeerism or if it's particular to this series. I could see it being an intentional choice as the book is particularly concerned with language and it's misuse, but I haven't read enough of his work to know.

>34 fundevogel: you know, I hadn't noticed the subject-dropping, but that seems very in keeping with the themes of identity and obfuscation that run through the trilogy!

Good point, I hadn't thought of that. I love it when the craft of writing is tailored to the story. It's just so...thoughtful.

22. Dead Men Do Tell Tales - Byron De Prorok 4/30/15
off my shelf

This feels like a 19th century dime novel, and it probably ought to be treated like one, but it's 20th century and actually a memoir. Wikipedia says this dude was the original tombraider, and while I'm not sure about the timing of that I wouldn't be surprised if he was the first to make a celebrity of himself as a professionally scorned archeologist. The tone is self-aggrandizing and naively racist, or maybe not naively. But for real. It is dripping with colonial entitlement. It was interesting hearing a bit about the state of Ethiopia back in the day as Prorok navigated interactions with local and national leaders. I had to take the whole thing with a massive grain of salt though so I'm not putting a lot of stock in his appraisal of any of the Ethiopians he spoke of. I'm sure there's some truth in it, but I am completely unqualified to tease the truth from the fabrication and eurocentric bias.

23. Acceptance - Jeff VanderMeer 5/10/15
from the library

I've put off reviewing this too long to give a very nuanced review unfortunately. I don't think this book was as artful as the prior books in the series, primarily because this uses a shifting viewpoint rather than one. I understand that doing this allowed VanderMeer to explore areas and illuminate things beyond the understanding of an yone character. All the same it loses some intimacy and becomes more common in doing so.

The book does provide an explaination of Area X without seeming to commit to it completely. This seemed appropriate to me as the series has always been about the futile effort of people to understand the environment while remaining objective. But with an environment that either destroys you or assymilates you objective clarity is impossible.

All in all it was a satisfying end to a good series, but not so artful as the earlier books.

>38 fundevogel: I was very conflicted about Acceptance - I liked bits of it (esp the lighthouse keeper), but it never got me emotionally engaged regards the outcome (unlike the previous two novels).

24. Devil on the Cross - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o 6/2/15
off my shelf

Thiong'o paints a dark, but hopeful picture of post-colonial Kenya. Here is a Kenya where westernized Kenyans profit off of the misery and desperation of their countrymen by emulating and subjugating themselves to western business. Thiong'o's handling of the subject matter is both incredibly personal and comicly satirized. In some ways his choices have a kinship with magical realism. There is a playfulness to his depiction of the the Devil's feast and the frenzied conpetition amongst the modern thieves and robbers to prove their skill in fleecing their countrymen for their own ends and those of their Western masters.

The book was a much needed counter balance after reading the painfully biased Dead Man Do Tell Tales. But even without my need to hear a native African voice this makes for a rousing and passionate read. It offers a revolutionary call not just against the destructive consequences of colonization, but also an unfliching indictment of globalism and the promotion of profit over people.

Most tellingly one of Thiong'o hyperbolic schemes suggested by one of the theives and robbers is a real thing. They do sell dirt to people by the potful to people too poor to own any land of their own. An idea Thiong'o clearly thought as shameful and ludicrous as selling air. And yet...

25. The Mystery of Lewis Carroll - Jenny Woolf 6/16/15
Off my shelf

Lazy review:

This painted a sympathetic picture of Carroll and offered strong counterpoints to the more salacious rumors about him (that he was a pædofile). However the same lack of information about Carroll's personal life that made such a fertile ground for the rumor mill also meant there wasn't a whole lot of to know about the man, as a man. I was somewhat disappointed that the book never mentioned the possibility that Carroll was asexual, as what is know about his personal life could be consistent with that. Most likely Woolf had never heard of asexuality though.

26. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown 7/27/15
off my shelf

Here's a book where the same fucked up story of broken promises, dehumanization, victimization and extermination just replays over and over. It's upsetting, but it's probably most upsetting how unsurprizing it becomes as America ruins one native population after another. It's hard to see it as anything other than a state organized extermination program, even if that's not how the state saw things. That was it's effect.

27. The Princess and the Pony - Kate Beaton 7/28/15

A fun children's book from Kate Beaton, complete with fat pony.

28. Hellboy: Conqueror Worm - Mike Mignola 7/28/15
from the library

I didn't enjoy this so much as the first few Hellboy comics. The art is still lovely, but I think the story suffers for it's length. Mignola seems to shine most in shorter format stories where things are sharp, to the point and undiluted.

#42> "It's hard to see it as anything other than a state organized extermination program, even if that's not how the state saw things."

It is how they saw things. It's just not what they called it.

29. The Monk - Matthew G. Lewis 8/24/15
off my shelf

I'd have a hard time calling is a good book, (a comment I'd extent to most 18th and 19th century novels), but it was a much easier and more enjoyable novel than any of the other old gothic lit I've read. It was overly long for sure but I was impressed with the level of grotesquery and even more so by the lack of moralizing. I really couldn't say what the author expected me to think of his characters of what his audience was expected to think. I was just happy to be left to draw my own conclusions without being told what to think.

30. Lumberjanes, Vol. 1 - Noelle Stevenson 8/26/15
from the library

I didn't find this as charming as Stevenson's Nimona but it's a good all ages adventure comic with a crew of kick ass girls. It would make a good gift for young readers. I only wish Stevenson had done the illustration.

31. The Democracy Project - David Graeber 9/11/15
from the library

Just another fist pumping book about fighting the power. The main focus is on the Occupy movement and the book places it historically, politically and idealogically. There's some good discussion of non-violent protest and diverse ways of engaging in political speech and the opposition they face from institutional forces. It offered a nice intro anarchistic principles and organizing.

32. The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare - Doug Stewart 9/30/15
off my shelf

I'd read a book a while back about this teenager that forged a shit-ton of Shakespeare and duped most of the British public including many ostensible experts. That book was inexplicably dry. This one was a much better but still not the page turner I hoped for. It was however a beautiful object lesson in the power of branding and authority. It was eyeopening to read the praise William Henry Ireland's writing recieved when people thought it was written by Shakespeare.

Apparently, a rose by any other name does not smell as sweet.

33. Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia - Richard Hertz 10/5/15

Gah. This has got to be the dirtiest side of the art world. Hertz steps back and lets Goldstein's friends, business associates, schoolmates and rivals recount their memories of Jack Goldstein. And those accounts vary froming fauning to emasculating. Overall the picture I assembled of Goldstein was that of a self-important status-seeker ready and eager to play the game, but too impressed with his own self-promotion to realize how quickly a career built on hype could turn on him.

34. Light - M. John Harrison 11/12/15

Harrison turns out a dazzling and terrifying universe here as three, possibly connected but radically different stories weave in and out. There are bread crumbs linking the junkie that's tried every thrill, the woman that's become spaceship and the murderous physicist, but in a way the message that rings strongest in my ears is that if we allow another to tell us the purpose of our own life it is at our own risk.

35. Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen - Matthew P. Mayo 12/5/15 (ER)

This isn't so much a history of chicanery and cheats in the old west as a collection of hamfisted creative writing exercizes paired with summaries of their historical inspiration. I might feel embarrassed about the ample cliches and stock characters if Mayo's book didn't ooze such misplaced self-satisfaction.

36. The Myths That Stole Christmas - David Kyle Johnson 12/14/15 (ER)

This was a quick but satisfying read. I had suspected many of the misconceptions Johnson unraveled, but it was nice having things laid out and dissected in an organized and well researched way. As someone that isn't happy with many of the compulsory Christmas traditions it was nice to know that Christmas has changed a lot over the years and ultimately how I choose to celabrate is up to me.

37. Stand Still Stay Silent - Minna Sundberg 12/21/15

This book collects the first five chapters of Minna Sundbergs epic post-apocalyptic roadtrip buddy web comic. The art is gorgeous, the colors sumptuous and the writing purposeful without being hurried or humorless. I look forward to more of this story online and in print.

38. This Boy's Life - Tobias Wolff 12/28/15

I'm not normally into memoirs, but I'd read his novel Old School some years back and loved it. I do prefer that book to this one, but Wolff is still a fine writer here and avoids the sins I most associate with memoirs (bad writing and ego). In fact, in a lot of ways this book is an indirect salute to his mother as he recounts the trouble they lived life with the complications making it as a single mother, dodgy housing, an abusive stepfather and Wolff's own questionable choices.

39. Nimona - Noelle Stevenson 12/30/15

Awww, I challenge you not to love the Ballistar Blackheart and his shapeshifting sidekick Nimona as they take on Ambrosius Goldenloin and the nefarious Institute. This one-off graphic novel (originally a web comic) has an irresistable charm and humor as science and magic clash and two old friends try their best to be enemies.

So that was 2015. On with 2016.